Internal emails throw light on the sources used by Government of Alberta staff to search for “inappropriate” materials in school libraries, including an index of America’s most banned books and a website linked to the rise in attempts to ban books in the U.S.
Alberta’s Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced in May the province planned to bring in new standards to ensure explicit and “age-inappropriate” books were kept off school library shelves, and said the policy “is not a question of banning specific books or specific titles but rather establishing clear policies and guidelines for all school divisions to follow.”
However, emails released through a freedom of information request show Nicolaides’s staff did create lists of specific books and titles they used to search Edmonton Public Schools (EPSB) and Calgary Board of Education (CBE) library catalogues.
In a Nov. 4 email, James Johnson, chief of staff for education and childcare, shared a link to an article about literary and free expression organization PEN America’s report showing a nearly 200 per cent increase in book bans in the United States, and its launch of a searchable database of banned and challenged materials.
“Can we see which books are banned the most and see if they're in [our libraries] where appropriate?” Johnson asked Alberta education ministry staff.
It also appears the department checked for titles censored by book bans in Austin, Texas, specifically, and found most of these novels were available in Alberta’s public schools. “Only 16 per cent of books banned in Austin weren't found in EPSB and roughly 19 per cent weren't found in CBE,” ministerial assistant Elizabeth Harper informed Johnson in a reply.
Jonathan Friedman, managing director of U.S. free expression programs at PEN America, objected to the use of PEN’s database by the Government of Alberta.
“The use of our index as a tool of possible censorship is disappointing and wrong,” he told the IJF in an email.
Friedman said that all the bans documented by PEN were instances of books that were removed after they had been placed in libraries by professional educators, based on a collection development policy or a curriculum expert, for use with young people.
“These are works with literary and artistic and scientific merit. And perhaps most important, these books contain stories and information that make a difference in the lives of students.”
In addition to titles from these lists of banned books, the emails show that Harper searched EPSB and CBE libraries for novels featured on the controversial amateur content rating system BookLooks.org.
BookLooks was launched in 2022 by Emily Maikisch, a former member of the book review committee with Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” organization listed as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The BookLooks website, which shut down in March 2025, provided reports on select books using its own rating system developed “to provide a means of assessing the appropriateness of a book for a child or young adult,” and was frequently used by people attempting to have books removed from school libraries — particularly those dealing with LGBTQ+ content and sexuality.
BookLooks’ rating system assigned books a score from 0 to 5, with corresponding age restrictions for each category. Along with violence, profanity and nudity, books were scrutinized for their inclusion of sexuality and “gender ideologies.” The mention of a gay person — “Jake and Bob are gay and married to each other,” is one example given on the website — would earn a book a score of 1, meaning it may be inappropriate for children. References to someone who is bisexual or transgender were categorized as “explicit sexuality/gender ideology,” and rated as requiring guidance for anyone under 13.
An analysis of the BookLooks rating system published in the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy found that passages about LGBTQ+ people and their allies were repeatedly flagged by the site and included in book reports, though they had no connection to profanity, nudity or sexual content.
“By trying to restrict the ability of young people to access these titles, the website creators are essentially advocating for the erasure of LGBTQIA+ identities rather than ‘every’ parent’s ability to make decisions for their own children,” the article's authors Jenna Spiering and Kate Kedley concluded.
The IJF asked Nicolaides whose decision it was to use BookLooks in the education ministry’s research, but he did not answer.
“To be clear — I have no authority to ban books, I am not banning books, I do not plan to ban books, and the rhetoric around this being a book ban is flagrant and irresponsible,” Nicolaides said in a statement.
“I asked my staff to gather information on books that show explicit sexual content and if they were in schools in Alberta. They located books of concern on shelves in Edmonton Public and Calgary Public schools.”
Edmonton Public Schools said it already has existing rules and regulations to support the selection of teaching and learning resources, and that these rules have been in place for a number of years.
A spokesperson for the CBE told the IJF it also has “rigorous processes to ensure that library resources are age-appropriate and relevant for students,” and clear mechanisms in place for any member of the school community to bring forward concerns about specific resources.
The list of objectionable materials in public schools compiled by Alberta’s education ministry appears to contain more than two pages of books. However, a copy of this list released through a freedom of information request was entirely redacted except for the four graphic novels previously named by the ministry: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato.
When Nicolaides first revealed plans in May for province-wide content policy and guidelines, he told media concerned parents had brought examples of “extremely inappropriate” materials to his ministry last November.
These examples of books from Alberta school libraries were in fact provided to Nicolaides by conservative activists from the groups Parents for Choice in Education and Action4Canada, as first reported by the IJF.
The IJF also filed a freedom of information request for records of meetings Nicolaides or his staff had in November and December last year related to age-inappropriate and graphic sexual content in school library books, but the search returned no records.
Months before meeting with Nicolaides, Action4Canada’s Kim McBride was invited to speak at a United Conservative Party constituency association event in Calgary in March 2024 on Alberta’s parental rights policy. During her presentation, McBride told the audience that comprehensive sexual education, sexual orientation and gender identity education were part of a campaign of indoctrination in schools and media, and that the “political trans LGBT agenda” is to target children and use them as agents of change.
Parents for Choice in Education’s executive director John Hilton-O'Brien also spoke at the same UCP event.
Nicolaides said he had not met McBride or others from Action4Canada before their meeting about school library books.
“Action4Canada was one of the groups that provided a list of books to me that were of concern to them, once during my only meeting with them in November, which prompted us to investigate the situation further, through various avenues,” Nicolaides said.
